1. Giants of the Amazon: How does environmental variation drive the diversity patterns of large trees?
- Author
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de Lima RB, Görgens EB, da Silva DAS, de Oliveira CP, Batista APB, Caraciolo Ferreira RL, Costa FRC, Ferreira de Lima RA, da Silva Aparício P, de Abreu JC, da Silva JAA, Guimaraes AF, Fearnside PM, Sousa TR, Perdiz R, Higuchi N, Berenguer E, Resende AF, Elias F, de Castilho CV, de Medeiros MB, de Matos Filho JR, Sardinha MA, Freitas MAF, da Silva JJ, da Cunha AP, Santos RM, Muelbert AE, Guedes MC, Imbrózio R, de Sousa CSC, da Silva Aparício WC, da Silva E Silva BM, Silva CA, Marimon BS, Junior BHM, Morandi PS, Storck-Tonon D, Vieira ICG, Schietti J, Coelho F, Alves de Almeida DR, Castro W, Carvalho SPC, da Silva RDSA, Silveira J, Camargo JL, Melgaço K, de Freitas LJM, Vedovato L, Benchimol M, de Oliveira de Almeida G, Prance G, da Silveira AB, Simon MF, Garcia ML, Silveira M, Vital M, Andrade MBT, Silva N, de Araújo RO, Cavalheiro L, Carpanedo R, Fernandes L, Manzatto AG, de Andrade RTG, Magnusson WE, Laurance B, Nelson BW, Peres C, Daly DC, Rodrigues D, Zopeletto AP, de Oliveira EA, Dugachard E, Barbosa FR, Santana F, do Amaral IL, Ferreira LV, Charão LS, Ferreira J, Barlow J, Blanc L, Aragão L, Sist P, de Paiva Salomão R, da Silva ASL, Laurance S, Feldpausch TR, Gardner T, Santiago W, Balee W, Laurance WF, Malhi Y, Phillips OL, da Silva Zanzini AC, Rosa C, Tadeu Oliveira W, Pereira Zanzini L, José Silva R, and Mangabeira Albernaz AL
- Subjects
- Brazil, Rainforest, Biodiversity, Wind, Acclimatization
- Abstract
For more than three decades, major efforts in sampling and analyzing tree diversity in South America have focused almost exclusively on trees with stems of at least 10 and 2.5 cm diameter, showing highest species diversity in the wetter western and northern Amazon forests. By contrast, little attention has been paid to patterns and drivers of diversity in the largest canopy and emergent trees, which is surprising given these have dominant ecological functions. Here, we use a machine learning approach to quantify the importance of environmental factors and apply it to generate spatial predictions of the species diversity of all trees (dbh ≥ 10 cm) and for very large trees (dbh ≥ 70 cm) using data from 243 forest plots (108,450 trees and 2832 species) distributed across different forest types and biogeographic regions of the Brazilian Amazon. The diversity of large trees and of all trees was significantly associated with three environmental factors, but in contrasting ways across regions and forest types. Environmental variables associated with disturbances, for example, the lightning flash rate and wind speed, as well as the fraction of photosynthetically active radiation, tend to govern the diversity of large trees. Upland rainforests in the Guiana Shield and Roraima regions had a high diversity of large trees. By contrast, variables associated with resources tend to govern tree diversity in general. Places such as the province of Imeri and the northern portion of the province of Madeira stand out for their high diversity of species in general. Climatic and topographic stability and functional adaptation mechanisms promote ideal conditions for species diversity. Finally, we mapped general patterns of tree species diversity in the Brazilian Amazon, which differ substantially depending on size class., (© 2023 John Wiley & Sons Ltd.)
- Published
- 2023
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